Agricultural Adjuvants in Brazil: Current Status and Proposal for Revision of Regulatory Issues

Improving pesticide distribution on plant surfaces, adjusting pH, reducing drift or foam formation - these are some of many roles played by agricultural adjuvants. Correctly applied they lead to improvement the efficacy of products used to controle insects, mites, plant pathogens and weeds.

Adjuvants improve spray pattern and thus help to reduce the volume of pesticide necessary to  achieve pest control. Direct results are the reduction in production cost and  in environmental and human health risks. Thus, it is reasonable to affirm that adjuvants are imprescindiible technologies towards a more sustainable agriculture.

As the name suggests (latin: adjuvare = help), agricultural adjuvants do not have biological activity on pests but act helping or modifying pesticide action or the chemical  and physical properties of the mix. This understanding is clearly stated in the decree that regulates pesticides in Brazil, where adjuvants are understood as “products mixed with formulated pesticides to improve their application.”

In Brazil, adjuvants that have been registered had to go through the same procedures adopted for pesticides, i.e., an agronomical efficacy evaluation, a toxicological analysis and ecotoxicological studies as well.  

This procedure is different from those adopted in the US, where adjuvants are not submitted to registration by the Environmental Protection Agency, provided they are composed only by previously authorized ingredients. “There is a list of ingredients authorized that may be used by adjuvant industries”, explains Luís Eduardo Pacifici Rangel, vicepresident of the Sociedade Brasileira de Defesa Agropecuária.

North American growers may also count on the support provided by the certication program CPDA - Council of Producers and Distributors of Agrotechnology. Certification relies on a frameset of previously established parameters, with scientific background. “We intend to present this experience to companies interested in production and trade of agricultural adjuvants and pesticides in Brazil, so as to provoke a discussion on our regulatory framework and other bottlenecks”, comments Rangel.

Tentative agenda:

• Round table: Adjuvants: Functional classification and impacts on spraying technology
• Adjuvants and inerts in USA – How are they regulated and the peer review over the residue impacts in Food.
• Environmental impacts of adjuvants use
• Adjuvants in Brasil: Regulation and inspections history and market issues
• CPDA program on products certification
• Conclusions and final remarks

• Agribusiness representation organisms
• Professionals enrolled in formation, registration and prescription of pesticides and ajuvants
  
• Regulatory officers
  
• Inspectors
  
• Researchers